


That Familiar Graveyard Between the Sternum and the Spine

by violaeade



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-16
Updated: 2015-03-06
Packaged: 2018-03-13 05:14:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3369146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violaeade/pseuds/violaeade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>so after the events of 2x12 (SPOILER), what if Octavia thought Clarke had died in the explosion, even though she didn't? and what if she told Bellamy?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> this is based off of a rant from tumblr user underbellamy, who always seems to inspire me to write painful things :) of course, we know that Clarke isn't dead, but Octavia doesn't know that, and now neither does Bellamy....please write a review if you have any comments/criticisms because i love hearing feedback, it keeps me fresh. also, the title of this piece is taken from a LOVELY song by Chris Pureka called Song for November, i highly recommend

“I have to go tell Bellamy,” Octavia rasps, leaning heavily on Lincoln.

He wraps his arm around her waist and pulls her closer, both of them so exhausted that they’d probably fall over without each other’s support. They’ve been digging through the burning wreckage of Tondc for hours and hours, pulling the injured and dead from the rubble. They’ve dug people out from under chunks of concrete, they’ve smothered flames, and they’ve given first aid to those that they knew how to help. It’s been grueling, and they haven’t stopped to rest since the missile exploded.

The sun is already peaking out from behind the thick clouds, and they know they’ve worked through the night. But it doesn’t matter, because Octavia can’t rest until she’s told her brother that Clarke is dead.

“Octavia, you’re about to collapse. You need to sleep, not take a hike to Camp Jaha,” Lincoln says.

Octavia shakes her head. “He deserves to hear it from me,” she tells Lincoln, looking up at him. “I’d want to hear it from him if he knew you had died,” she says, locking her jaw and forcing Lincoln to hold eye contact.

Lincoln reaches up and uses his thumb to wipe away some of the soot and ash from Octavia’s face. He sighs heavily, knowing he couldn’t stop her anyways, and says, “Go, tell your brother what happened here tonight. But be careful.”

Octavia nods solemnly, then leans forward to plant a parting kiss on Lincoln’s lips. She steps out of his arms, looks down the path into the woods she’ll be running, and takes a deep breath. Bellamy doesn’t even know what’s coming.

*

Octavia clears her throat as she enters the command room. Raven is sitting at the table, going over the schematics of Mount Weather again, and she jolts in surprise as Octavia walks in. When Raven recognizes Octavia, she jumps from her seat and starts to run-limp to throw her arms around her.

“Oh, Octavia, thank god!” Raven sighs and hugs Octavia closer. Octavia finally puts her arms around Raven, too, holding on the last peaceful moment she’ll have for a while. “I was so godamn worried! You look fine, are you fine?” Raven says as she pulls out of the hug.

“I’m fine,” Octavia says, trying and failing to smile back at Raven.

“Where’s Clarke?” Raven asks, her voice still so optimistic.

Octavia feels her throat close off and can only shake her head and look at her boots as an answer. She’s tracked in ash on her boots from the fires, but it doesn’t matter.

“Holy shit,” Raven breathes as she realizes what happened. The two girls stand in silence, thinking about what Clarke’s death will mean for everyone at Camp, and the alliance. What it’ll mean for each of them, personally.

Raven clears her throat and says, “Are you here to tell—?”

Just then, the radio crackles and Bellamy’s voice is echoing off the walls of the room. “Raven? Any word from Clarke?” he asks, sounding worried.

Octavia swallows hard, knowing how difficult this is going to be for her brother. He and Clarke were partners, and had been through so much together, and he trusted her probably as much as he trusts Octavia. It isn’t fair that she died, but she did, and Bellamy needs to know.

Octavia looks at Raven, who’s biting her lip and carefully picking up the radio like she’s afraid it’ll break or something. She hesitates to answer Bellamy, and Octavia doesn’t blame her: who would want to drop this bombshell?

Octavia steps forward and takes the radio from Raven’s trembling hand, and gives her a poignant look. They hold eye contact for a moment, and then Raven nods at Octavia in reassurance. _You can do this,_ she seems to say.

Octavia presses the talk button and says quietly into the radio, “Bell?”

“Octavia? That you?” Bellamy replies immediately, and he sounds so relieved that Octavia’s heart breaks. God, this is going to be awful.

*

Bellamy is smiling so wide his cheeks hurt. The relief he feels is so overwhelming, he can’t think straight for a second.

“Yeah, it’s me,” Octavia says, sounding drained.

He doesn’t care about how weary she sounds right now; he can only focus on the fact that she’s talking to him and that she’s alive. He was so damn worried that she was going to get blown up tonight, and that he was powerless to do anything about it. He was stuck in this stupid mountain while his little sister might be getting blown to bits. He shudders thinking about how torturous his entire night was as he waited for news.

“Are you okay? What happened? Are you all right?” he asks, still a little frantic.

“I’m fine, Bellamy, I’m completely fine,” she assures him, but now something sounds really strange in her voice. It almost sounds like she’s holding back tears.

Bellamy frowns and says, “Something happened. You don’t sound fine.”

“Bellamy,” Octavia says hoarsely, and it sounds like a warning. _Please, don’t ask. Stop talking._

Bellamy’s heart rate picks up. He thinks about every horrible thing that could’ve happened, and there are so many possibilities, but by the way his sister is acting he knows it could only be one thing.

“Where’s Clarke?” he croaks. His heart is climbing up his throat, and he tries to swallow it back down but it won’t go. He can feel it creeping higher and higher as he waits for Octavia’s response.

But when she stays silent, Bellamy’s breathing gets ragged and he needs to know _right now_ what happened and he presses the button and shouts into the radio, heatedly, “Where is Clarke?” and he can feel pieces of himself falling to the floor.

“She’s gone, Bell,” is all Octavia says in a broken voice.

Bellamy staggers and throws up an arm to catch himself against the wall. His mind is spinning and he can’t breathe and Clarke is dead and holy shit Clarke is _dead_ and there’s nothing he can do—

“I’m so sorry,” Octavia says sorrowfully, and he can tell she’s crying but he can’t focus on Octavia right now because his mind keeps pulling him back to Clarke.

He talked to her this afternoon! She was loud and in charge and trying to boss him around, and he was listening to her voice just _hours_ ago. Oh, god, the reality of the situation keeps smashing into Bellamy again and again and he feels like he’s drowning. He’s only been swimming once, but it was a big lake and it was freezing, and it was harder than he thought to keep his limbs moving as they froze. His head dipped below the water at one point, and he was thrashing around and sucking in water and when he finally broke the surface again, he was gasping and sputtering water and wondering if he was going to die. He feels like he’s drowning all over again as the idea of never seeing Clarke again is crushing him, and he feels like he can’t breathe from beneath the weight of his grief.

The radio sputters and Octavia is talking again, but her voice sounds far away to Bellamy. He hears the words she says, but he processes nothing.

“Bellamy, you’ve gotta keep working, Clarke would want that. You _have_ to save the rest of the 47, okay?” she’s saying, and she sounds anxious, like she’s worried Bellamy is going to do something stupid.

“Bellamy!” she snaps when he doesn’t respond for a minute. The worry in her voice is overpowering now.

“Yeah, yeah, I will!” he growls, but it sounds all wrong with his voice in shambles.

“You’ll be okay,” Octavia murmurs and he completely disagrees. His heart hurts too much right now for it to ever heal entirely. He feels irreparably broken, as if something very important to him was just crudely ripped right from his chest. Even if he could find whatever he lost, dust it off and put it back, it’ll never feel quite right. He’ll never forget that it was gone for a while, and how much it hurt when it was taken from him. No, he’s going to feel this hurt for as long as he lives, he knows it. He knows it.

“Oh, god, Clarke,” he moans, his voice sounding so guttural he doesn’t even recognize it as his own. He clutches at his chest, trying to hold himself together and ebb the pain, but it’s useless work and he eventually stops trying. Instead, he shakes his head and asks into the radio what he needs to do next. He lets the pain completely overwhelm him until it just becomes another part of living, like breathing, and he is able to keep moving. He _needs_ to keep moving, or else he knows he’ll fall apart, and that can’t happen. He has shit to do, and it’s become more important than ever that he saves everyone—the 47, the children, the Grounders in cages—from the Mountain. He adds Clarke’s name to the list of reasons why he’s going to raze this Mountain to the ground, and he sets his jaw, and he gets to fucking work.


	2. Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> since a few people asked for it, i decided to write another chapter to this story! i was in the process of writing it before a lot of the new episodes came out, so suspend your disbelief when things don't match what happened in the show. this is part Clarke's POV after the missile hits TonDC, and part Bellamy's POV when he's still in the mountain. i love you for reading this

Clarke’s lungs are full of ash and dust and cold, morning air. Even though she’s miles from TonDC, she can still feel the ashes from the burned city coating her throat, like tar that she won’t be able to scrape away. It’s been hours since she left Lexa back at the city—“You motivate your people, I’ll rally mine,” Lexa said—and yet she can still feel Lexa’s eyes burning (how appropriate) behind her cloak, warning Clarke from doing something stupid. But all Clarke wanted to do was something stupid: she was tired of trying to follow a line of morality that sometimes went one way and sometimes went the other. She was tired of the exhaustion and guilt, and the constant planning and calculating and everything else that came with making thought out decisions. Why couldn’t she be stupid for once?

But, no. If she acts stupid, she would have sacrificed everyone in TonDC for nothing; the alliance would break, her mother would hate her even more, and she would be alone and unable to save the rest of her people in Mount Weather. She risked everything for this and she’s not about to throw all of that away just because she’s tired of what role she’s been given.

Clarke sighs and puts her head in her hands for a moment, pausing on her hike to clear her weak thoughts away. She’s only a few miles from Camp Jaha now, and she’ll keep it quiet that they knew about the missile. The only people that knew were Raven and Bellamy, and they’ll both understand why Clarke let the town burn.

Oh, god. Bellamy. Octavia. Clarke hadn’t even let herself think about Octavia since she and Lexa slipped out of the city and into the safety of the woods. Clarke’s breath hitches as she remembers assuring Bellamy that Octavia was safe in Camp Jaha, and how broken he’s going to be when she tells him that she let his sister die for _his_ safety. _He’s going to hate me,_ Clarke thinks, sorrow filling her chest so quickly that she feels physically weighed down. All morning, Clarke had done nothing but think about the overall tragedy of this missile, but she hadn’t thought about how it would individually affect the loved ones of the dead, and those that survived. _I’m a fucking monster,_ Clarke says to herself, biting back tears of self-loathing.

But she keeps walking forward, getting closer and closer to Camp Jaha with every leaden step. She’s trying to think of ways she can be straightforward with Bellamy, but still somehow keep him from hating her. She comes up with nothing. She knows she should be thinking of ways to unite the rest of her people into battle—grand speeches require some forethought, at least for Clarke—but she can’t stop thinking about her lie and how she just let Octavia (resilient, brave, compassionate Octavia) _die_ , without even much of a fight. Clarke could have tried harder to think of an alternate solution, but she didn’t. People were counting on Clarke, and she’d failed them in such a spectacular way.

Clarke shakes her head and steels herself, not allowing guilty thoughts to tear her apart anymore. Not now, at least. There’ll be plenty of time for that later. So Clarke makes the rest of the journey furrowing her brows in concentration, forcing herself to think of ways to motivate her people instead of fixating on the lives she lost last night. But no matter how hard she tries, she can still taste ash and smoke in her mouth every time she breathes.

*

When Clarke eventually strides into Camp, everything is in chaos. People are already strapped in battle armour, with weapons holstered and grim determination set in their faces. Nobody pays much attention to her as she wades through the pandemonium, and she feels just a tiny bit of relief seep into her. They’ve figured out what happened with the missile at TonDC, and they’re already ready to fight. They don’t need Clarke to make a speech, because they understand that war is upon them.

Clarke stumbles deeper and deeper into Camp, letting the atmosphere of determination wash over her until she can’t hear her own thoughts anymore. She can only hear the grunts of her people, the pounding of their feet, and the clamor of their voices as they chant the Grounder mantra—blood must have blood. None of this makes what she did at TonDC okay, but at least she knows now that it wasn’t for entirely nothing.

Clarke feels a hand on her shoulder, and she turns to see Octavia standing before her. Octavia’s hair is braided back and she has black makeup swirling around her eyes. There are beads of sweat on her forehead, and her mouth is parted with disbelief. Clarke can’t process what she’s seeing until Octavia pulls Clarke into the tightest hug she’s ever had, and the air is crushed right out of her lungs, and then she knows she’s not just imagining things. By some miracle, Octavia survived. She _survived,_ just like she always does. Clarke lets out a sob as the relief swells in her chest and she hugs Octavia even tighter.

“How are you alive?” Clarke chokes out.

“I could ask you the same thing,” Octavia says, pulling out of the hug to look Clarke in the eye. It takes every ounce of Clarke’s resolve to not look away as she recalls the cowardly way she and Lexa slipped into the woods, keeping the burning world at their backs. Octavia can’t know, and so Clarke can’t look guilty.

“I’m glad you’re not dead,” Clarke manages to say, her eyes still struggling to stay locked on Octavia’s.

It’s precisely because Clarke’s eyes are still holding Octavia’s that she notices the change in demeanor the moment it happens. Octavia’s mouth parts again, this time in horror, and her pupils dilate with some emotion Clarke can’t quite place. Dread? Regret?

“Oh, Bell,” Octavia breathes.

Clarke’s heart starts racing again. “Yeah, I really need to talk to Bellamy.”

Octavia shakes her head. “You can’t.” Octavia places a soft, comforting hand on Clarke’s forearm. “We lost contact earlier today. The radio isn’t picking up his frequency.”

Clarke swallows back a fresh wave of terror for Bellamy that tries to resurface several times a day. It’s become part of her daily routine, to be honest. Wake up, pull on boots, bury worry for Bellamy, have breakfast.

“Is Raven working on a solution?” Clarke asks, fighting to keep her voice neutral.

Octavia nods. “She’s doing the best she can. But, Clarke?”

Clarke meets Octavia’s eyes, which are big and scared despite the grim set of her jaw and the intimidating way she carries herself. “What?” Clarke asks.

“He thinks you’re dead. He was falling apart a little when we last talked, and now that we can’t check in with him, we have no idea if he’s doing what he needs to.”

Clarke feels her heart sag in her chest, but she straightens her back and forces Octavia to meet her gaze when she says, “It’s Bellamy. Of course he’s doing what he needs to.”

*

As the Grounders swarm around him in the long halls of Mount Weather, beating and hacking and stabbing every Mountain Man they see, Bellamy feels all of his adrenaline dissolve until he’s left with just pure exhaustion coursing through his veins. Everyone else is hyped up as they run headfirst into battle, but Bellamy has been fighting every second for days inside this godforsaken mountain, and he can’t muster the energy to do anything else. He did so much already: he infiltrated the Mountain, he managed to disable to acid fog with only a little help from Raven and Wick before they were disconnected, and he released the army of bleeding Grounders from their cages. He kept most of the 47—44 now—alive, and he fought some Mountain Men before the flood of Grounders started to wash through the halls. But now he just watches from the shadows as screaming Grounders sprint past him, weapons raised and a bloodthirsty look in their eyes.

He thinks about going back to the hiding spot he and Maya found for the rest of his people, despite their insistence that they wanted to fight. They considered giving everyone weapons and sending them into the fray, but there were some Mountain Men under orders to capture any Sky People they could grab, and it wasn’t worth losing anyone else to the grueling bone marrow extractions. Bellamy finally decides to stay where he is, relatively safe and hidden. It’d be more dangerous to try and find his way around in his guard uniform, since the Grounders won’t be able to tell him apart from the rest of the guards. _I’ll just take a little rest here_ , Bellamy thinks, letting himself sink deeper into the shadows.

Eventually, he starts to see some people he recognizes from the Ark make their way through the halls. A brief smile plays on his lips, glad that the alliance is holding out and working and destroying this mountain. He feels a surge of pride for his people, these cold and determined people that survived space and the descent to earth, and he pulls out his gun and joins the mob. The people around him recognize his face and (thankfully) don’t shoot him immediately. The adrenaline is kicking back in, and just as the excitement starts to fill him up, he sees a blonde wave of hair from the corner of his eye.

His heart batters itself against his chest and he turns to see Clarke standing right beside him. She’s looking up at him in awe, tears filling her eyes, and she grabs his arm to stop him walking away. They don’t break eye contact, and the rest of their people part around them. The two of them stand still in a sea of soldiers heading off to war, feeling arms bumping roughly into theirs as people pass, but they don’t care. Bellamy feels his throat close off and Clarke’s grip tightens on his arm.

When he realizes what she is—just another godamned hallucination—he yanks his arm out of her imaginary grip and starts breathing heavily. He’s seen Clarke wandering the halls of this mountain so many times since he heard she died, he’s lost count. He knows she’s not real (because she’s dead, she’s buried under a pile of rubble, and ash and dust is coating her skin and she’s staring up into nothing, forever and ever—) and it just breaks his heart all over again. She looks so _real,_ though, less clean and pristine than the other hallucinations, but he can’t let himself get fooled every time, because he doesn’t have the strength to piece himself back together again right now. He shakes his head, trying to force himself to look away from the illusion, but she’s gazing up at him with the biggest eyes he’s ever seen and he can’t stop staring.

“Bellamy, it’s me, it’s Clarke,” he hears her say, and her voice is cracking and she’s reaching for him again but he’s backing away and squeezing his eyes shut and clamping his hands around his ears. He stumbles into people as he backs away, but he manages to stay standing until his back hits the wall. _She’s not real, Bellamy, she’s not real_ , he tries to convince himself, but when her warm fingers intertwine with his shaking ones, it’s almost impossible to believe.

“Bellamy, please,” she whispers, and he can just barely hear her. “I’m here, I’m not dead, I survived the missile. Please, just look at me.”

“No, no, no,” he rasps, craving her touch and forcing himself to pull his hands from hers. But she holds tight, and he feels himself breaking down. He can’t let himself fall for it again!

“YOU’RE NOT REAL!” he screams so loud his throat burns, and then he’s trying to back away from this cruel delusion again, but he’s against the wall and can’t go any farther.

Clarke’s hands grip his forearms now, and her voice is forceful as she shouts back, “I’m real! I’m right here, Bellamy, I’m right here!”

When she finally steps into his arms, burying her face in his neck and crying softly against his throat, he starts to let himself wonder: what if this is really her?

“Clarke?” he asks, his voice so tender and vulnerable he can barely stand it.

“Bellamy,” she whispers back, and he leans his head down to press his cheek against the top of her head. He breathes her in, his heart jack hammering in his chest as he slowly becomes surer and surer that Clarke is really standing before him.

“I thought you were dead,” he says after what feels like an eternity of just standing there wrapped up in her arms.

“But I’m not,” she says, her tone comforting. “And you can come back to Camp now. We’re going to beat the Mountain Men.”

Bellamy nods and holds her tighter.

“You did it, Bellamy. Without you, the Mountain never would have fallen and—”

“Clarke,” he interrupts, “just please be quiet for another second. I just want to stay here for a while longer.”

He feels her smile against him, and they stay pressed up against the wall together, soaking in the fact that they’re together, and that they survived, and that nothing could pull them apart after this.


End file.
